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Apologies for the tardiness of this post. It would seem that Smiffy’s holiday has gone on longer than he originally intended, or something else has prevented him from posting a blog, so here is one I prepared earlier.

I can’t say I particularly enjoyed this puzzle because there seemed to be a degree of looseness in some of the definitions and/or wordplay and I had a few question marks left at the end (particularly against 15d) as indicated below.

Down
1 SCUBAS CUBA (Caribbean country) in SS (ship) – Chambers, Collins and COED do not give ‘scuba’ as a verb and only list it as a modifier in scuba diver or scuba diving.
2 SCOFFING dd
3 TITLE ROLES TITLE (championship) ROLE (position) S (second)
4 FEND F (fine) END (finale)
5 ILLUMINATI ILLUMINATI[on] (light not on)
6 SPAS SAPS (drains) reversed
7 ALKALI AL[tar] KALI (goddess)
8 AFFRIGHT FF (very loud) replaces L (left) in ALRIGHT (OK) – ‘alright’ is in Chambers but should the clue not have read ‘….. very loud – not left in OK’.
15 BIPARTISAN BI (homophone of ‘buy’, corrupt) PARTISAN (soldier)BI (homophone of ‘by’?) PART (corrupt soldier?) IS AN (on) – the definition is presumably simply ‘both sides’ but I fail to see the wordplay though a homophone could be indicated (‘according to’ = by?) and ‘corrupt soldier’ could be PARA with a letter changed. I sincerely hope I am wrong and that someone can offer a better explanation. Full clue: “According to reporter, corrupt soldier is on both sides (10)”.Edit: Thanks Agentzero for the correction but it now seems that the definition may be wrong. See comments #1 & 2.
16 KICK AROUND KICK (how to end addiction) A ROUND (a variety of drinks) – but a round of drinks could be five pints of bitter so no variety there.
17 BAPTISED *(BAD PET IS)
20 RUBAIYAT *(ART I BUY A) – ‘first-class’ = A
22 RARITY RIT (slowing down) in RAY (streak) – streak = ray???
24 WORMED ME in WORD (undertaking)
26 ECRU hidden in ‘cluE CRUciverbalist’
27 SETT SET (fixed) T (time)

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 7:10 pm and is filed under FT.
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Thanks Agentzero. I knew there had to be a simpler explanation for 15d. I had considered partisan, but didn’t see (hear) the buy/bi homophone, but that means the definition must be ‘on both sides’ which is not the meaning of ‘bipartisan’. This was why I was looking for a way of accounting for the ‘on’.